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[fingersoup]

Samplers Beware!!!!!

Dilvie brought this up on the Psycledelics forums, and I thought it should have a real widespread distribution.

http://www.downhillbattle.org/3notes/

Basically, if you sample anything remotely commercial, even if it is hacked, looped, processed, spit on, etc... even if it is unidentifiable, if you've sampled without permission, it's ILLEGAL IN THE US.  Check out the Lawsuit results at the aforementioned site.  

Thank George Clinton & the Funkadelics (and his people at the RIAA) for this one.  

See the original post by Dilvie Here at Psycledelics.

[DNS]

reminds me of that repetitive beat prohibition in england.
one of those monty python absurd moments in life.

i wouldn´t be wondered if they pulled it trough, the law.
frankly - it could actually turn out good - musicians turning to criminals - buying mixtapes in dark alleys:)


the question is - this is US.
is it going to affect other countries aswell.

seriously. how many musician´s are there - how many are sampling - what would the cost of the legal process be to bring them to justice. let alone track them down.


US politics is something i will never understand.

[fingersoup]

I understand it...  I just don't like it.   It was actually a precedence set in case law that was repealed, so right now there exists no exclusion clause for samplers who decimate an original sample into something completely different.   Basically, if I lived in the US, and I sampled someone's sine wave, then hacked it apart in Audacity to make a sawtooth wave, or a square wave, White noise, etc. I am breaking US law...  This changes the legality of MANY songs tracked in the US.  

However, the US gives the right for peaceful protest, and allows exemptions for commentary, so the guys at 3 Notes and Runnin' are compiling a bunch of user submitted music as a means of peaceful protest.  Write a 30 second clip of music, using nothing but the sample used to repeal the law.  You can tear the thing to shreds to make your own samples, but the only source of sounds can be the stupid cliche guitar riff, and what you can do with that riff using your imagination.

Bring back the art of sampling for the people in the US.  Prove that it was stupid to repeal this law, because of it's impact on simple honest people like ourselves, who MAKE and USE samples, not copy and abuse them...

[fingersoup]

Oh, did I mention?  Dilvie is running a compo for music producers over at UTRave?  follow the guidelines set by 3 Notes and Runnin', and submit your song to both locations.

[DJMirage]

bah there goes my tatu remix :X

[binaerpilot]

I'm going to go out on a limb here but I hardly think you can blame George Clinton for this one. he has done so many great things for music throughout the years that I refuse to believe this was his doing. I for one is guessing his label.

anyway, the downhillbattle-initiative is excellent and might be able to at least inspire new thought about this horrible legislation. I hope as many as possible on UT contribute.

the way I see it, this is just another <em>war on terrorism</em>. incredibly stupid, rash and is only going to provoke more of what it's supposedly fighting against. I'd say the chances for this law to last are slim and none. ooops, I forgot, Bush is still in office. go team usa!

[fingersoup]

If George Clinton was having lawsuits fought on his behalf by his label, he should at least be involved and aware of the process/situation.

As for being another "War on Terrorism", I don't think so...  Personally, I think this is just a court/judge bending to the will of the RIAA and various other organizations.  Bush had nothing to do with this decision.  Some judge wanted to either make a name for himself, or he's on the RIAA payroll...

[binaerpilot]

he should, and probably was notified of it, weither or not he had the rights to do something about it is another question.

it being another "war on terrorism" was meant metaphorically. the bit about Bush was just saracasm (him being the "leader" of the country and all that jazz).

[n0n]

this is bull, one ignorant statement made a keyboardist  loose every ability to play the piano, or anyother synth instrument that even comes close to a "copyrighted" song.  cause who has the ability to really decifer whats thiers and whats not if there is no evidence, and no evidence means no case.    lame ass group just ruined sampled music for the rest of us, why the hell didnt they just say no its not the same riff, they wouldnt have been lying.   wow, I meen come on, so I can play a riff on guitar that was exactly the same then alter it but I cannot sample the original riff and alter it, what the hell is the difference?  lame greed why is it money ruins everything.

I'm adding my help, peacefull or not, the devil has his grip on killing music.

[fingersoup]

why the hell didnt they just say no its not the same riff, they wouldnt have been lying.   wow, I meen come on, so I can play a riff on guitar that was exactly the same then alter it but I cannot sample the original riff and alter it, what the hell is the difference?

It's not that it's the same riff, it's that they DID sample from George Clinton.  Their arguement was that the sample was unrecognizable unless directly compared.  

While this defense has held up in court before, this judge decided that even though the 12 members of the jury would have never matched the riff in the NWA song to the George Clinton song (Even the George Clinton fan), that this is irrelevant, and regardless of the fact that the sample had been processed into something that sounds different, it was still a violation of copyright.

While it is true that you can re-record a sound-alike sample, the onus on you to prove that it isn't a direct rip.  Just stating "It isn't the same" isn't enough.  This proves to be a more difficult defense.  

Furthermore, we have not seen how this decision will affect the other areas of copyright.  What if someone claims that their riff is so unique it belongs to them, and anyone who copies it is in violation of copyright because performance rights were not secured.  What if I recreate the riff from "(I Can't get no) Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones...  How long before that copy becomes illegal because I didn't secure performance rights?  Even if I've chopped it up so that the riff is unidentifiable.  Lets say I just chose to record that riff because I needed certain tonal interactions that are in there, but not the actual riff?  Should my samples be illegal because I recorded the whole riff?

Basically this decision opens the floodgates for a whole pile of copyright infringement cases.  It also allows people to break down other case law regarding copyright in a much easier fashion.  The intent of the law is shifting, and if the current laws don't meet the new intent, then they will fall as well.

Should I write a song consisting of nothing but an F note and legally copyright it so nobody can use it for violation of performance rights?

When does the butchering of copyright law end?

[Aszazin]

Visit the http://aszazin.tk

and see what I personally think about this kind of stuff, unfortunatly, at this moment of writing the site is down (doesn't happen a lot, and is always temporarly)

Music is not into the possession of any government at all, and also not of any organisation. Music moves itself throuigh the air.
Governments cannot limit anyones creativity. No tracker should take account of any law that is invented to control the stream of money to a certain side. sampling a sound, from your enviropnment, or from a recording, or from a gig or from where-ever you can tghink about and using it as a musical instrument even isn't sampling or ripping. It is creating something with a substance.
Putting copyrights on this practice is the same as putting copyright on the use of atomic elements out of the table of Mendiliev.

The best thing people can do is ignoring this copyrighrt laws all together so that it is an impossible job for USA government to search and prosecuter all that have done this.
make use of pseudonyms to make it more difficult to find you.
always deny that this pseudonym is you
files sent out from your computer on the internet can always be detected coming from you, but if you haven't installed a firewall, any hacker could have done it and also he could have removed his tracks that prove he was on your computer, the trick is to have many connections open on the moment you spread your file (file sharing programs are very powerfull in this)

other possibilities are that you all learn how to use shell access and open up an account abroad (for you americans) Internet is a public place, so if you work through a shell account in europe publishing your files, they will be available anywhere, and you have done the job outside america (even if you commanded it from the USA)
Very difficult job for them governmental phokkers

RIAA is not our boss, and will never be, I never signed a contract with them stating that I will create and publish music according to their prescriptions, rules and guidelines, nor did I ever sign anything with any state government or copyright organisation. Yes I did sign some things from the state, I didn't have any choice. Otherwise they would steal all my opportunitities to function in this society. I need a ID card and a passport etc... but that was never my personal choice, so ignore those phokkers, why should you know their rules anyway?? I don't read newspaper, I Don't watch TV, I don't have personal contact with them, neither by paper mail. No one informed me, musician of their law, so I don't know what their law is and I do what I like to do in accordance with my direct surroundings. Never in accordance with all media around me.

Don't support the mafia, do as you like.

[fingersoup]

A lot of what you say is true...  However, Copyright law has a good side too.  It keeps people from putting their name on your work.  The problem is when the lines get blurred, as with the Clinton sample.  If something is identifiably someone else's, I see a problem with using it...  Vanilla Ice and Queen, for instance was a serious breach of copyright (not to mention bad taste), as rights were not gained before copying the main riff of a song verbatim.  I think that the Clinton case SHOULD have gone to court, because the riff in question was almost taken verbatim.  My problem is the fact that, although the jury concluded that the sample was satisfactorally different to be considered unidentifiable, the judge went against previously established case law, and said that regardless of how unidentifiable it is, because the source was copyrighted, and permission was not gained, that the sample was illegal.  

To put this decision in perspective, if I take a single sample point from a commercial source, I'm now breaking the law in the US.

As for the rant about not agreeing to laws, if you wish to remain a citizen of the US, you have basically agreed to abide by the laws of the US.  If you don't like it, get out.  THAT is part of what Citizenship means.  Unfortunately, there are times where laws are unjust, and decisions are made with ignorance to knowledgeable people.  That is why most free countries give the right to peaceful protest.  This is one of those times to participate in peaceful protest, so that people DON'T get prosecuted for stupid things such as taking uniidentifiable samples from various sources to create something unique.

There's a movie out there called "SLC Punk"...  The movie is kind-of ho-hum, but the message at the end made by Matt Lillard's character is important:  You can cause more damage from inside the system than you can from the outside.  Use your rights of peaceful protest, and whatever legal means you can to stir the pot, and prove that what you are fighting for is just.  The best thing is NOT to ignore copyright laws, but to strike them down.  In order to do that, the US public needs to prove that making copyright laws too strict has prevented innovation and creativity, at the hands of the few.

[heart99]

Samplers Beware!!!!!

Dilvie brought this up on the Psycledelics forums, and I thought it should have a real widespread distribution.

http://www.downhillbattle.org/3notes/

Basically, if you sample anything remotely commercial, even if it is hacked, looped, processed, spit on, etc... even if it is unidentifiable, if you've sampled without permission, it's ILLEGAL IN THE US.  Check out the Lawsuit results at the aforementioned site.  

Thank George Clinton & the Funkadelics (and his people at the RIAA) for this one.  

See the original post by Dilvie Here at Psycledelics.

Is that really easy to change the copyright of law of US?




_________________
California Orange County Lawyer

[fingersoup]

Well, The long and the short of it is that US copyright law is so broken, it needs to be repealed in its entirety and rewritten to a fair standard.  This is no small feat, and the government has so many lobby groups pushing for big business regulations that lock paying customers into a virtual monopoly, that this will likely never happen.

In the previously mentioned case, a judge had set a rather prolific precedence in terms of case law.  The decision made in said judgment can now be used to argue against several instances of sampling similar to the George Clinton case.  Up until the point of this case, artists were protected by fair use clauses in US Copyright law.  This decision basically changed the definition of a legal sample.

Of course, events after this decision have come to light, and really showcase the two-faced nature of US law.  Apparently, If the sample is not from a US artist, or a big business artist, then it doesn't matter if someone blatantly steals a sample. Here's an example that has hit the Tracking community pretty hard in the past couple years.


Of course, the Timbaland controversy used the same fair-use clause that was "Struck Down" in case law in the George Clinton lawsuit.  In other words, US lawmakers have a double-standard to protect American "big business Recording industry", while screwing over the little guy.  Timbaland has a history of doing this, and he gets away with it, because, of course, he is a US artist, and has the RIAA backing him up, because he makes them money.  On the other hand, when it is 2 parties who work within the RIAA's jurisdiction, the decision goes to the person who was sampled....

For a more accessible piece of info regarding the now defunct 3 Notes Running movement, check out the WIRED article here.

[melissa09]

United States copyright law governs the legally enforceable rights of creative and artistic works under the laws of the United States. And according to California Orange County Lawyer, Copyright law in the United States is part of federal law, and is authorized by the U.S. Constitution. The power to enact copyright law is granted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, also known as the Copyright Clause, which states: "The Congress shall have Power [. . .] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".